His work done among his Colonists, he left them never to see them again. He went south from Fort Douglas to the United States, visited, it is said, St. Louis, came to the Eastern States, and rejoined in Montreal his Countess and children who had in his absence lived in great anxiety. One of his daughters, afterwards Lady Isabella Hope, told the writer nearly thirty years ago that she as a girl remembered seeing Lord Selkirk as he returned from this long journey, coming around the Island into Montreal Harbor paddled by French voyageurs in swift canoes to his destination. His attention was immediately given to law suits and actions brought against him in the courts of Upper Canada. These legal conflicts originated from the troubles about the two centres—Fort Douglas and Fort William—where the collisions had taken place. The influence of the Nor'-Westers in Montreal was so great that the U.E. Loyalists of Upper Canada sympathised with them against the noble philanthropist. Justice was undoubtedly perverted in Upper Canada in the most shameless way. Weak in body at the best, Lord Selkirk by his misfortunes, losses and legal persecution began to fail in health. With the sense of having been unjustly defeated, and anxious about his Colonists in Red River, he returned with his family to Britain to his beloved St. Mary's Isle. He sought for justice from the British Parliament, but could there get no movement in his favor. A copy of a letter to him from Sir Walter Scott, his old friend, is in the hands of the writer, but Sir Walter was himself too ill at the time to lend him aid in presenting his case before the British public. Heart-broken, he gave up the struggle. With the Countess and his family he went to the South of France and died on April 8th, 1820, at Pau, and his bones lie in the Protestant Cemetery of Orthes.
He had not fought in vain. He had broken down single-handed a system of organized terrorism in the heart of North America, for the Nor'-Westers never rose to strength again. They united in a few years with the Hudson's Bay Company. He established a Colony that has thriven; he cherished a lofty vision; he made mistakes in action, in judgment, and in a too great optimism, but if we understand him aright he bore an untainted and resolute soul.
"Only those are crown'd and sainted
Who with grief have been acquainted
Making Nations nobler, freer."
"In their feverish exultations,
In their triumph and their yearning,
In their passionate pulsations,
In their words among the nations
The Promethean fire is burning."
"But the glories so transcendent
That around their memories cluster,
And on all their steps attendant,
Make their darken'd lives resplendent
With such gleams of inward lustre."
CHAPTER XII.
SOLDIERS AND SWISS.
Many Canadian Settlements have had a military origin. It was considered a wise, strategic move in the game of national defence when Colonel Butler and his Rangers, after the Treaty of Paris, were settled along the Niagara frontier, and when Captain Grass and other United Empire Loyalists took up their holdings at Kingston and other points on the boundary line along the St. Lawrence. The town of Perth was the headquarters of a military settlement in Central Canada. Traces of military occupation can still be found in such Highland districts of Canada as Pictou, Glengarry and Zorra, in which last named township the enthusiastic Celt in 1866 declared that perhaps the Fenians would take Canada, but they could never take Zorra. Numerous examples can be found all through Canada where there is an aroma of valor and patriotism surrounding the old army officer or the families of the veterans of the Napoleonic or Crimean wars.